Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle control apparatus which is configured to execute a cruise control for causing a vehicle to travel without an operation of an acceleration operator or a brake operator of the vehicle and a driving assist informing for performing an informing for alerting a driver of the vehicle on the basis of road situation information acquired from an outside of the vehicle through a wireless communication.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known an apparatus for displaying a lighting color of a traffic light around a vehicle and a time required for the present lighting color to change to a next lighting color on a display of a navigation device of the vehicle (for example, see JP 2004-171459 A).
A constant display of the present lighting color of the traffic light on the display of the navigation device and the like may cause a driver of the vehicle to feel a discomfort. The inventors of this application are developing an informing device for informing the driver of an occurrence of a particular situation which the driver should be alerted, depending on a type of the particular situation when the particular situation occurs.
For example, the informing device may be configured to determine that the particular situation occurs when a distance between the vehicle and the traffic light which lights a red signal becomes a predetermined distance and inform the driver of a fact that the traffic light lights the red signal.
Further, there is known a vehicle having a function for executing an automatic traveling control for causing an own vehicle to travel at a constant vehicle speed or with an inter-vehicle distance between the own vehicle and a preceding vehicle traveling in front of the own vehicle without a driver's operation of an acceleration pedal or a brake pedal of the own vehicle. In general, such an automatic traveling control is called as a cruise control.
When the own vehicle is automatically accelerated or decelerated by the cruise control with the driver of the own vehicle being informed of the occurrence of the particular situation, the driver of the own vehicle may misunderstand that the cruise control is executed in consideration of the particular situation without the driver's operation of the acceleration pedal or the brake pedal of the own vehicle.
The present invention has been made for solving the aforementioned problem. An object of the present invention is to provide a vehicle control apparatus which can suitably inform the driver of the own vehicle of the particular situation without causing the driver of the own vehicle to misunderstand that the cruise control is executed in consideration of the particular situation.